This blog is intended to document
the development of "An Arcade Project", a site-specific piece of dance focused
around the Westminster Arcade in downtown Providence, Rhode Island.

This project has been made possible by a grant from the Creative Arts Council of Brown University.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

30/9/11

This blog is one medium that I am using to record and process my thoughts. Another is the old-fashioned pen and paper journal that I have been keeping to record observations and thoughts I have whilst I am at the site, or in rehearsal. Below is the page from my journal documenting my time spent at the Arcade on 30th September.

My ostensible reason for going down was to measure out some of the spaces on the porticos that I am interested in using. Ideas for the different vignettes are beginning to take shape, and I have started to create and set them on the dancers, but in order to do so I needed more specific understandings of the space's dimensions. I used my body to measure out the space. The foot unit I was using was the length of my own foot, and the "body widths" was my shoulder span. Part of the reason for this was practical- I did not have a measuring tape or a metre ruler. But it was also an intentional choice to reflect the way that my understanding of the space is experiential. My body is the medium through which I understand the porticos; I have not spent any time pouring over blueprints or looking at plans, so a dimensioned, rational understanding of the space is not part of my experience researching this building.

The video below records the faded graffiti on the Weybosset portico which I had not noticed before. As I mention in my journal entry, my attention was also caught by the sign on the railings below. I have seen it many times before, but this time it called to mind Marianne's comment about there never being enough seating inside, which was part of the reason why there were always so many people on the steps.

The following video was made when I walked the section of the new Providence Independence Trail that goes past the Arcade on Weybosset Street. It is a cell phone walking tour with a number to call at different points of interest, but it does not seem that the Arcade gets a stop of its own.

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About Me

I am an independent dance artist based in London. I am interested in making site-specific work that is informed by my background in archaeological approaches to urban space, and that (re)presents the site in unexpected and provocative ways.